Born in the 2000s, she raised 150 million yuan in financing.

The idea of starting a business germinated from a personal experience.

In a cramped office, a 22-year-old girl was driven to the brink of collapse by the tedious and complex document integration. At that moment, the idea of asking AI to help send invoices and process freight documents emerged. So, she quickly reached out to an alumnus with great AI talent, and a company named Sola Solutions was born.

The masterminds behind this are two post-2000s from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - 22-year-old Chinese-American girl Jessica Wu and 23-year-old Neil Deshmukh.

Recently, they secured financing from well-known venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. According to the official website, it includes a $3.5 million seed round led by Conviction and a $17.5 million Series A round led by a16z with Conviction participating, totaling $21 million (approximately 150 million RMB).

Quietly, the post-2000s have started to plunge into the AI entrepreneurship wave.

Dropping out of MIT, post-2000s

A Chinese-American girl starts a business

The story of Sola Solutions begins with a post-2000s girl.

According to the official website, Jessica Wu is a Chinese-American studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has participated in the product design of several startups and has also been engaged in venture capital and quantitative trading at companies such as Citadel, Goldentree, and Thrive Capital.

During her time at MIT, Jessica Wu met another co-founder, Neil Deshmukh, an AI genius.

The opportunity for this entrepreneurship stems from the pain point that traditional RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is not very useful. In her previous experiences, Jessica found that although traditional RPA can automatically execute tasks, the process is complex, the cost is high, and the system is very fragile, unable to meet the task requirements of the financial industry.

So, Jessica came up with the idea of designing an AI agent. She contacted Neil, and they hit it off immediately. In 2023, they both dropped out of MIT and founded Sola Solutions.

Specifically, Sola's solution is to use AI agents to automatically process data. As an agent robot, it can learn, plan, and make autonomous decisions like a human. Different from traditional AI that relies on pre - determined rules to operate, Agents can automatically handle complex tasks with only a small amount of human intervention and can optimize itself.

According to their vision, from sending invoices and processing freight documents to data entry and archiving, all processes can be realized on a platform without programming. The product will be used in fields such as logistics, insurance, and healthcare.

With its simple tool, Sola has carved out a niche in the RPA market dominated by giants. Its customers include the American law firm Morgan & Morgan PA, the transportation giant Ally Logistics LLC, the remote work management platform FirstBase.io Inc., and Kintsugi Mindful Wellness Inc.

The two founders said in an interview with foreign media that their vision is to "take over repetitive work" and make human work more creative.

Two years, $150 million in financing

With the latest financing, Sola Solutions has caught the attention of the venture capital circle.

Recently, the company completed a $17.5 million Series A financing led by Kimberly Tan and Jennifer Li, partners of Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), with Conviction participating.

A little earlier, Sola had completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing led by Sarah Guo of Conviction, with investors such as Y Combinator participating.

So far, this post-2000s founder team has raised a total of $21 million, approximately 150 million RMB.

The latest round of financing is quite dramatic. The ones who invested in Jessica are also two outstanding female investors -

One is Sarah Guo, the founder of Conviction, a well - known name in the Silicon Valley venture capital circle. She became a partner of the famous venture capital firm Greylock in her twenties and resigned in 2022 to found Conviction.

"If you are curious and willing to make mistakes, then you are more likely to find the truth." Sarah Guo positions Conviction as the first investor in startups, focusing on the AI - native field. Among the companies it has invested in are star unicorns such as Cognition, Harvey, Mistral AI, and Sierra.

The other is Kimberly Tan, a partner at a16z. She graduated from Stanford University with excellent grades in 2018 and joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2019, becoming one of the youngest female partners.

Over the past few decades, the technology venture capital field has traditionally been male - dominated and has always been regarded as a synonym for rationality and hardcore. However, we also see that with their unique perspectives and resilience, more and more women are making waves here and becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Remember in June this year, the AI startup Thinking Machines Lab completed a $2 billion seed round of financing, with a valuation reaching $10 billion. The company was founded less than half a year ago, had no products, yet created the largest seed - round financing in history.

The soul figure of the company is Mira Murati, known as the "Mother of ChatGPT". She joined OpenAI in 2018 and briefly served as the CEO. Another co - founder is also a woman - Weng Li, a top student from Xi'an and an alumnus of Peking University.

In addition, as Meta invested approximately $15 billion in Scale, Lucy Guo, who just turned 30, stepped into the spotlight. She was a co - founder of Scale AI. With her 5% stake, her net worth skyrocketed, making her the world's youngest self - made female billionaire in Forbes.

Also impressive are: Daniela Amodei, co - founder and president of Anthropic, valued at over $60 billion; Fei - Fei Li, former chief scientist of Google Cloud AI and founder of the spatial intelligence company WorldLabs; Wenjing Guo, the "genius girl" from Hangzhou and founder of Pika Labs... The list goes on.

In this wave of AI entrepreneurship, the presence of women is particularly prominent.

The post-2000s are starting to take the stage

Looking at this, the venture capital circle is entering the era of the post-2000s.

Previously, another post-2000s alumnus became an internet sensation. Remember two months ago, a startup named Axiom unexpectedly went viral: with no products and no customers, it was seeking $50 million in financing and was valued at approximately $300 million to $500 million. The creator of Axiom is also a post-2000s girl - Carina Hong.

Born and raised in Guangzhou, Carina Hong attended the famous South China Normal University Affiliated High School, won multiple medals in the Olympiad competitions, and was admitted to MIT. She graduated with a master's degree from the University of Oxford. Later, while pursuing a dual - degree in mathematics and law at Stanford University, she founded Axiom. Although her latest response said that the financing details were "untrue", this post-2000s girl is still amazing.

You may not know that in the AI world, a group of post-2000s founders are stepping onto the stage -

Cursor was developed by four post-2000s from MIT. In recent years, it has quickly swept through the Silicon Valley AI circle, and the parent company, the AI programming company Anysphere, is valued at a staggering $9 billion. Three post-2000s who dropped out of school founded an AI recruitment website, Mercor, which has risen to become a unicorn worth tens of billions in just 24 months.

Looking at these popular AI startups, they have undoubtedly attracted a number of venture capital institutions in a short period of time, with valuations often reaching billions of dollars. And "the proportion of post-2000s" has become their label. In the investment circle, you often hear the summary - "The era of AI belongs to the post-2000s".

As we turn our attention back to China, in January 2025, three "post-2000s geeks" from Tsinghua University - Min Yuheng, Cheng Yi, and Li Yizhe started a business in robotics, and Lingcifang was born. The company completed angel + and angel ++ rounds of financing in the hundreds of millions, attracting well - known institutions such as Hechuang Capital, Tongchuang Weiye, Lihe Kechuang, Shuimu Fund, Mizuho Lihe, and Ralph Venture Capital.

Recall in 2014, IDG launched a program targeting the post-1990s and discovered many promising post-1990s entrepreneurs. Ten years have passed, and as the tide of the times rolls on, those shining post-2000s have stepped onto the historical stage, and investors' attention has begun to focus on them.

One generation will eventually grow old, but there are always those who are young.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment World" (ID: pedaily2012), written by Yuying Yu and Wenjing Yang, and is published by 36Kr with authorization.